Family. Born near here, and grew up here. Otherwise I wouldn't have considered it, not moving to the midwest, but Illinois...YES...is not financially sound, and it's all driven by Chicago .... and now Chicago types drive DC. Lived in Texas 23 years. Winters are pretty good, but they have an extremely long hot summer down there. Summers can get pretty bad in Illinois too, but on balance they are not. From a financial position, this was probably unwise. But the place I have now is really nice compared to what I had in Texas.
BTW this pond is near perfect now. Previous owner really took care of this place, probably better than I'm going to be able to. I will try to keep it as nice as I can.
GGB - Fishing is excellent, and want to keep it that way. I have plenty of grass in the pond, bordering on perhaps to much. And I like you, need to do some research. Perhaps a few grass carp....but I want a fair amount of grass, in the water, it helps the fishing. But I want to walk around the pond and not deal with high weeds, as is the case now. Just last night, caught 5 in 2-4lb range in 15 minutes. Buzzbaits.
A small section of the pond. It's 3-4 times the size this pic shows, you need a bass buddy otherwise you miss half the pond fishing it.
The bad thing is, things will never get better. Chicago has more representation at the capitol than the rest of the state combined. The "chicago machine" has destroyed IL and through that idiot in the White House now it's destroying the country.